_ I\\\\\tl/ l ; \ lrtfhl / I \\\ nlllirn l o.oo I (11;' )} 0- (<f( VJ : lrTì I , I -@f?7(-; Jì 1\ ) j=_. } J;) II. J J , f o. ': . · ì '\ - , \1 ,,0 0 0" 0 \\ ì - 8 I d: '\ \ u" \ lJ \ '" \ \ '\ \ " 24 rior, lonely ego and stays hOlne, or be- comes a public character and goes out constantly, or becomes glamorous, no Inatter \v here he or she happens to be. Miss Davis \vas glamorous, years ago, for about a month. This period ended when, backed up by a smart to\vn car con taining a white poodle and liveried chauffeur, and attired in moody black velvet slacks and jacket, she met her mother, who had been on a trip East, at the Los Angeles railway station. Mrs. Da vis was unable to believe her o\vn eyes and flatly said so. The glamour was dropped later that day. For years, before she was successful, Miss Davis sneaked off to neighborhood movies to see herself and suffer. Of her first big Holly\vood première, given to her film "All This and Heaven, Too," she has said that all the ham in her was f 1JJ i t W i----r- - rrn <1 ø 1ìï 0 - - I II , L \\ thrilled at seeing the waItIng crowds and her name in lights and that there \vas, far more than she had imagined, excitemen t in sniffing the gala air and listening to the \vhispers and applause. She had \vaited a long time for it and had supposed It \vould never come. Last summer Miss Davis founded the Holly\vood Canteen, \vith, for once, the arguing not being done by her. Her idea that it should be, though independ- ent, affiliated with the New York Stage Door Canteen, which she took as a model, outraged the motion-picture chauvinists and the Hollywood trade papers, quick to resent any compliment to Broad\vay. After a lot of talk and \vork the canteen opened in an aban- doned night club on Cahuenga Boule- vard. There, just as in Ne\v York, the stars wash dishes and \vait on table, ((Still) did you ever stop to think where you and I would be if it weren)t for evil?" and patronage flourishes. The day be- fore the opening, \vhen Miss Davis \vas sweeping the floor, a soldier, at- tracted by a certaIn amount of com- 111otion, dropped in. "Say, you look like you were Bette Davis," he observed. She said yes, she was. "Well, lady) your pictures certainly stink, but you look like sweetness and light now," he said. In real life , as it is called, Miss Davis acts exactly as you would think from seeing her on the screen. Face to face, she is vital, arresting, restless, and in- formal. She gestures a great deal, as in "The Little F'oxes," and has a nervous tic of tossing her head, as in "The Old Maid." She also has a woodwind laugh. Her conversation is pertinent, stimulat- ing, and personal; it is animated by sud- den ideas, reactions, and asides, almost as if she were talking to herself (which, as a matter of fact, she says she does), and these serve for her as temporary conclusions. Her vocabulary is a mix- ture of slang, and polysyllables. It used to be rather like a Restoration comedy until some cameramen made a film of one of her heated studio arguments. As she \vatched the picture, she remarked, " M d " d ... y amns seem monotonous, an started breaking the habit. She still sl110kes a lot, that always having been her second vice. In the flesh she looks s111aller than she does on the screen; she is five feet three and a half, and she tries not to let her weight fall helow her nor- mal hundred and ten. As Queen Eliza- beth, she weighed ninety pounds and the regal robes weighed seventy-five. She likes buttermilk between meals and is loyal at any time to New England clam chowder. Like many women who \vork, she detests cooking, and she says that a husband who won't fry an egg for his wife when she comes h0111e tired doesn't love her. Miss Davis wishes that she had been born beautiful. Her magnificent planta- tion of ash-blonde hair is the only thing about her appearance that satisfies her. \''''hen she \vent into films, her first di- rector l11ade her bleach it, which out- raged her. Letting it resume its o\vn lambent lightness was one of her ear- ly victories. \'Then a cinema critic ad- miringly referred to her as Pop-Eye the Magnificent, she shrieked, alter- nately, \vith indignation and laughter. "Oh, that same old face!" she recent- ly shouted at herself and to an open- mouthed intervie\ver in her dressing room. "Imagine having to look at it fifty times a day on a job like this! " It is her notably large eyes, disliked at first by both Hollywood and herself, \vhich